


Our perfect storm

by Ostodvandi



Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Angst, Eirika and Fado make a brief appearance i guess, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 02:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20166385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ostodvandi/pseuds/Ostodvandi
Summary: They were always a losing game. And Ephraim could never see it.





	Our perfect storm

**Author's Note:**

> WOHOOOOOO I LOVE MY TRAGIC GAYS. EphLyon crawled so Claumitri could walk.

Ephraim looked out of the window, to the carriage the servants were preparing for their travel to Grado. The prince himself was packing a small bag of whatever personal items he was planning to take with him, and he knew Eirika and his father were waiting for him to finish.

‘You’ll have a lot of time to look out of the window later, Ephraim.’

‘I know… I’m almost ready,’ he whined, picking up a couple more things before finally closing the bag. ‘There! Ready!’

Fado smirked. ‘Good. Your sister has been waiting for ages.’

‘It wasn’t that bad.’

‘Well, if you’re both ready... Don’t cause father McGregor too much trouble. Oh and… Also remember to be kind to the prince of Grado and befriend him.’

Ephraim nodded, giving the window and the sky outside one last look. He was curious about this prince more than anything, since he had never heard of someone changing their title from princess to prince, except in some history books he didn’t pay much attention to anyway. What did he look like? Would he be nice? Father had told him Lyon was a clever, kind prince but…

*

The sun was almost done setting, and so Lyon was already turning on their lamp, a book on his lap and another one on the table, between his and Ephraim’s seats. Just looking at all those letters put together made Ephraim dizzy, so he had resorted to looking exclusively at Lyon. 

Somehow that was more distracting than the option of looking out of the window. Lyon’s voice was soft and nice, and Ephraim could watch his hands gesticulating all day. He could define a lot of things about Lyon as soft or nice, now that he thought about it.

He smelled nice. His smiles were soft. His laugh was really darn nice. His cheeks and eyelashes were also…

‘Ephraim, are you listening?’

‘Oh. Uhm. Sure.’

Lyon huffed. ‘Where did you get distracted this time?’

‘Dunno.’ Ephraim stretched, blatantly ignoring Lyon’s disapproving face.

‘Father McGregor is going to scold you again… Please, just try to stay with me.’

Ephraim groaned. He didn’t like studying. He was good enough with the lance, he could beat Lyon at chess sometimes, and he absolutely didn’t need all of this memorizing nonsense when he could just look it up.

And even if he tried to keep reading and listening to Lyon, his thoughts always slipped to Lyon’s… softness. Niceness.

Lyon started talking again, and Ephraim silently wondered if he had kissed anyone before.

*

The weapons clashed, just for a moment before Lyon’s sword was sent flying and the prince stumbled and fell, hitting the ground with a soft groan. Ephraim pursed his lips, but didn’t make any comments as he picked Lyon’s sword up from the ground and walked next to his friend to lend him a hand. 

Which Lyon didn’t take, choosing to stare at the ground instead, his eyes out of Ephraim’s sight. 

‘Lyon?’

Avoiding as much eye contact as possible, Lyon got up on his own, holding back tears as the somber thoughts he was familiar with started piling up in his head. What kind of prince was he? What kind of man was he? If he couldn’t do something as simple as sparring… 

‘Lyon.’ Ephraim’s voice sounded quite too loud for his incipient headache. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No,’ he lied. Everything felt wrong at the moment, but he had no time nor will to start explaining it to someone that would probably not understand it. How would Ephraim, of all people, understand what it was like to feel pathetic?

He was perfect, or the closest to it Lyon had ever seen.

‘Lyon-’

Ephraim grabbed his arm, but Lyon brushed it off with a hot anger Ephraim had barely ever seen coming from him. With his back turned to him, Lyon made sure his friend couldn’t see his pathetic, flushed crying face. 

‘There’s nothing wrong. L-Leave me alone.’

Even then, his voice broke. He was ridiculous. Pathetic. He could almost hear Ephraim’s thoughts. What a stupid, useless prince. Maybe he wasn’t even using the word prince in his mind. 

Before he could ridicule himself further, and seeing that Ephraim just wouldn’t go away, Lyon decided to rush to his own room. Ephraim didn’t follow him, he only stayed standing in the middle of the training grounds. Good, Ephraim wouldn’t get so see him breaking down so easily over one stupid sparring match.

But it was never just one. It was all of them. Was it too much to ask to win just once? To be faster, stronger than him? Just once…

Ignoring the voices that called for him on his way to the room, Lyon soon found himself in his own comfortable and private space. The place where he could cry his eyeballs out about every sparring match, every time Ephraim had been better than him, and every time he had charmed Lyon while doing it, widening the cracks inside of Lyon’s mind.

If he couldn’t be like him, what was he supposed to be?

*

The sun started setting on the skies of Serafew, as Lyon watched the birds cross the sky in Frelia’s direction. A chilly wind was starting to rise, and the Gradian prince was shaking a little, even with a thick cape over his shoulders.

He looked at the other man by his side, who seemed hypnotized by the flowers swayed by the twilight wind. In reality, Ephraim was trying to think of a good way to convey his thoughts, a thing he had never been especially good at, no wonder how many fancy words he had learned. 

Ephraim took some air in, and finally turned back to Lyon. ‘Sorry. It’s getting late, and cold…’

‘It’s fine,’ Lyon said, even if the fear of catching a cold was getting more and more realistic by the second. ‘I can wait. What was it that you wanted to talk about?’ 

‘It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.’ Ephraim got up from the bench where they had been sitting, and after a little hesitation, Lyon did so too. ‘Let’s go home, I’ll tell you on the way.’

‘...Alright.’

The way home wasn’t as long as Ephraim had wished, and that only caused him more anxiety. He had to collect his thoughts quickly. He he felt like this was going to be his only chance in a long time to get that out of his chest.

‘Lyon. I think a lot about you. You’re my best friend so, uh, of course I’d think about you. But it’s a different way of thinking…’

‘A different way…?’

Ephraim nodded, looking away from Lyon’s charming, purple eyes to put his thoughts together again. ‘Yes, I… don’t know how to explain without it feeling… weird. But it’s something big, and I… Can’t stop thinking about it.’

Much for Ephraim’s desperation, Lyon only seemed to get more and more confused by his words. ‘I-I see.’

‘What I mean,’ Ephraim quickly said, coming to a halt and looking directly at Lyon’s face. It was a blushed, puzzled face and it was… it was… ‘Is that I like you.’

It was so pretty.

There were more seconds of silence between them than Ephraim dared to count.

‘And I was wondering,’ Ephraim swallowed, turning his hands into fists behind his back. ‘If you… Felt something similar to what I’m feeling. Just… that.’

More silence, more anxiety piling up in Ephraim’s chest.

‘Or if you,’ he continued, ‘would like to… do something about it.’

The way Lyon was fidgeting was the way he moved when there was something he couldn’t say. 

‘I don’t think I can answer that now…’

Ephraim blinked. Yes, it made sense, Lyon would need time. He wasn’t an impulsive person.

Ephraim would wait, until Lyon reached a decision.

‘Just promise you will answer me, someday…’

Lyon’s smile was oddly sad. ‘...I promise.’

*

A lance crosses his chest, a clean and quick stab. Lyon's whole body pulses with pain, from his chest to the tip of his fingers. Lyon whines.

Siegmund digs deeper into him, pulling a small, bloody cough. ‘Lyon,’ Ephraim’s voice sounds distant, foggy. ‘I’m sorry. I’m…’ 

He takes the lance out of Lyon’s chest, and catches him in his arms. His gloves and sleeves are dyed warm red. His eyes are so blue, Lyon might as well be looking at the sky. And it’s raining.

In the fog, he finds a memory of a question he never answered to. But it’s pointless if you can’t answer it anymore. Or were too stupid to answer before, when, in hindsight, it was so simple.

In any case, Ephraim’s arms are a good place to die in.

**Author's Note:**

> Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd is the forbidden EphLyon child. Also I hope you're crying just as much as I cried writing this.


End file.
